4 ms·

The lower the score, the better. I know many who have a policy of "emails must be in plaintext only, with no attachments unless agreed to in advance; everything

The lower the score, the better. I know many who have a policy of "emails must be in plaintext only, with no attachments unless agreed to in advance; everything else gets deleted automatically."

shortformblog 3y ago
Expand your group of people, because you clearly don’t know enough people.
- dylan604 3y ago
  I disagree. I wish I had more people that fit that filter. Email is broken and just a platform for spam. Even if it might be from someone that I purchased something from once or even regularly, if I did not select a check box to opt-in to receiving your email, it is spam. It's 2024. Emailing large file attachments is about as old and busted as FTP. There are so many other services to "share" large files. Attachment to email was such a kludgy hack in the first place just shows it was only the best worst idea waiting for better solutions. We have them now.
  - shortformblog 3y ago
    As someone who works very regularly in email, it really bugs me that every time I see a thread about this topic in Hacker News there seems to be this confirmation bias that this is how the average person uses email in the wild, and I’m just trying to make the point that “Hey, this is a strong minority viewpoint.” I get that y’all don’t like HTML email, but the fact of the matter is, that was a battle lost 25 years ago, and we need to figure out how to keep what we have working for people who don’t even know how to set plaintext email. That’s what this particular tool is for.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - ceejayoz 3y ago
        There's a vast spectrum of HTML email. Most people use it in the "bold a few things and make a few words into a link" side of things; more like the old .RTF format. The caniemail.com stuff is for the more complex stuff that might be better left to websites.
      - shortformblog 3y ago
        First: I run a popular newsletter that uses custom HTML theming and CMS customization. I don’t work in marketing. I just genuinely think HTML in email is actually a value add. Not everyone you disagree with works in marketing. Secondly: The problem you’re pointing at is bad implementation of standards, which is entirely on Microsoft and Google. (Mostly Microsoft.) The reason HTML doesn’t work well in email is because of bad prioritization, which has led to kludge upon kludge.
        gbalduzzi 3y ago
        > The reason HTML doesn’t work well in email is because of bad prioritization, which has led to kludge upon kludge. Honestly the main reason is that HTML/CSS expanded well over the creation of documents into the creation of apps. Email content does not really need all of that, it will always only support a subset of that causing confusion. That said, the lack of standards is definitely the worst aspect of all of this and resulted in the current absolute chaos
      - bddgyrdfv 3y ago
        [flagged]
        OmarAssadi 3y ago
        I don't reject HTML email, but I always have my client set to read plaintext. 99% of the time, the worst thing that occurs is simply some garbled hyperlinks for a verification email or similar. Personally, I don't have any need for HTML email in my daily life, and the only emails I occasionally get that are very obviously 'broken' in some way in plaintext mode are usually marketing emails or other messages I don't want to read in the first place. So, I figure, may as well keep it disabled since plaintext is more consistent and easier to read, and there is significantly less surface area for exploits when you don't need to bundle half a browser to view a couple of paragraphs.
    - croes 3y ago
      There are valid reasons ro dislike HTML in emails https://lutrasecurity.com/en/articles/kobold-letters/ https://lutrasecurity.com/en/articles/kobold-letters/ And if we have to chose between bold letters or less malware, we should choose the latter.
      - shortformblog 3y ago
        By this standard, we should go back to Lynx, because rich web browsers are way more dangerous than this extreme edge case that this guy invented because he doesn’t like HTML email.
        croes 3y ago
        Guess why browser sandboxes, TLS and HTTPS exist? But the mail protocol is still the same.
        shortformblog 3y ago
        That's a problem of failing to manage standards, not a problem with rich text in emails. Email is a standards backwater, but the solution is not to kneecap it.
- evantbyrne 3y ago
  They said many of the people they know only accept plaintext, not all of them. We should interpret each other generously.
  - shortformblog 3y ago
    My point, though, is about confirmation bias. Most people don’t know a lot of people who turn on plaintext email as a point of habit. It might seem like I’m criticizing the guy, but the thing is, there is a very real problem where people are looking at this from their own tech-forward perspective when this is a topic that affects many more people.
    - userbinator 3y ago
      For another interesting datapoint: Of the plaintext-only and plaintext-strongly-preferred people I know, somehow almost all of them are German. I wouldn't call them "tech-forward" either, as many of them are specialists in other fields. ...and before the inevitable questioning I'm going to receive: no, I'm not German, and I know more people who aren't, with similar plaintext preferences.
    - pyrale 3y ago
      I believe there are two points in the message : - A normative one : the less is supported, the better. - A descriptive one : many (not indicative of any share) of their relations actually do that. None of the points is telling about their relations, aside from, maybe, not having many friends in adtech.
      - shortformblog 3y ago
        "Many friends in adtech ..." try average people. HTML email would not be a thing if only adtech people used it, my man.
        pyrale 3y ago
        Average people tend to use what they have, I have zero "average" friend trying to get more supported features than there currently are. And, by the way, most of my friends do not use html/CSS directly, or even indirectly use it besides some bold, coloring or the random photo attachment. Zero of them know caniemail.com, and, if they understood the point of it, zero of them would want or need it. Average people seeing html in their mail doesn't mean they have an opinion on it, or would want more of it if they were told honestly what it does and who abuses it.
yyyk 3y ago
There's a good case for expanding slightly on plaintext. It's not just decorative - some usecases like Right-to-Left or lists or linked are helped by a little markup, and HTML is good enough. The problem is going overboard on CSS (maybe none should be allowed) or allowing any javascript at all. I can't recall any email security issue ever which is HTML only without any CSS or javascript.
jimbobthrowawy 3y ago
I know at least two people who send emails where the HTML version is either blank or tells the recipient to stop using a bloated client, and the actual email content is in the plaintext fallback. I think I had to look at the email source in thunderbird to read them.

The lower the score, the better. I know many who have a policy of "emails must be in plaintext only, with no attachments unless agreed to in advance; everything else gets deleted automatically."

shortformblog 3y ago

Expand your group of people, because you clearly don’t know enough people.

dylan604 3y ago
I disagree. I wish I had more people that fit that filter. Email is broken and just a platform for spam. Even if it might be from someone that I purchased something from once or even regularly, if I did not select a check box to opt-in to receiving your email, it is spam. It's 2024. Emailing large file attachments is about as old and busted as FTP. There are so many other services to "share" large files. Attachment to email was such a kludgy hack in the first place just shows it was only the best worst idea waiting for better solutions. We have them now.
- shortformblog 3y ago
  As someone who works very regularly in email, it really bugs me that every time I see a thread about this topic in Hacker News there seems to be this confirmation bias that this is how the average person uses email in the wild, and I’m just trying to make the point that “Hey, this is a strong minority viewpoint.” I get that y’all don’t like HTML email, but the fact of the matter is, that was a battle lost 25 years ago, and we need to figure out how to keep what we have working for people who don’t even know how to set plaintext email. That’s what this particular tool is for.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      There's a vast spectrum of HTML email. Most people use it in the "bold a few things and make a few words into a link" side of things; more like the old .RTF format. The caniemail.com stuff is for the more complex stuff that might be better left to websites.
    - shortformblog 3y ago
      First: I run a popular newsletter that uses custom HTML theming and CMS customization. I don’t work in marketing. I just genuinely think HTML in email is actually a value add. Not everyone you disagree with works in marketing. Secondly: The problem you’re pointing at is bad implementation of standards, which is entirely on Microsoft and Google. (Mostly Microsoft.) The reason HTML doesn’t work well in email is because of bad prioritization, which has led to kludge upon kludge.
      - gbalduzzi 3y ago
        > The reason HTML doesn’t work well in email is because of bad prioritization, which has led to kludge upon kludge. Honestly the main reason is that HTML/CSS expanded well over the creation of documents into the creation of apps. Email content does not really need all of that, it will always only support a subset of that causing confusion. That said, the lack of standards is definitely the worst aspect of all of this and resulted in the current absolute chaos
    - bddgyrdfv 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - OmarAssadi 3y ago
        I don't reject HTML email, but I always have my client set to read plaintext. 99% of the time, the worst thing that occurs is simply some garbled hyperlinks for a verification email or similar. Personally, I don't have any need for HTML email in my daily life, and the only emails I occasionally get that are very obviously 'broken' in some way in plaintext mode are usually marketing emails or other messages I don't want to read in the first place. So, I figure, may as well keep it disabled since plaintext is more consistent and easier to read, and there is significantly less surface area for exploits when you don't need to bundle half a browser to view a couple of paragraphs.
  - croes 3y ago
    There are valid reasons ro dislike HTML in emails https://lutrasecurity.com/en/articles/kobold-letters/ https://lutrasecurity.com/en/articles/kobold-letters/ And if we have to chose between bold letters or less malware, we should choose the latter.
    - shortformblog 3y ago
      By this standard, we should go back to Lynx, because rich web browsers are way more dangerous than this extreme edge case that this guy invented because he doesn’t like HTML email.
      - croes 3y ago
        Guess why browser sandboxes, TLS and HTTPS exist? But the mail protocol is still the same.
        shortformblog 3y ago
        That's a problem of failing to manage standards, not a problem with rich text in emails. Email is a standards backwater, but the solution is not to kneecap it.
evantbyrne 3y ago
They said many of the people they know only accept plaintext, not all of them. We should interpret each other generously.
- shortformblog 3y ago
  My point, though, is about confirmation bias. Most people don’t know a lot of people who turn on plaintext email as a point of habit. It might seem like I’m criticizing the guy, but the thing is, there is a very real problem where people are looking at this from their own tech-forward perspective when this is a topic that affects many more people.
  - userbinator 3y ago
    For another interesting datapoint: Of the plaintext-only and plaintext-strongly-preferred people I know, somehow almost all of them are German. I wouldn't call them "tech-forward" either, as many of them are specialists in other fields. ...and before the inevitable questioning I'm going to receive: no, I'm not German, and I know more people who aren't, with similar plaintext preferences.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    I believe there are two points in the message : - A normative one : the less is supported, the better. - A descriptive one : many (not indicative of any share) of their relations actually do that. None of the points is telling about their relations, aside from, maybe, not having many friends in adtech.
    - shortformblog 3y ago
      "Many friends in adtech ..." try average people. HTML email would not be a thing if only adtech people used it, my man.
      - pyrale 3y ago
        Average people tend to use what they have, I have zero "average" friend trying to get more supported features than there currently are. And, by the way, most of my friends do not use html/CSS directly, or even indirectly use it besides some bold, coloring or the random photo attachment. Zero of them know caniemail.com, and, if they understood the point of it, zero of them would want or need it. Average people seeing html in their mail doesn't mean they have an opinion on it, or would want more of it if they were told honestly what it does and who abuses it.

yyyk 3y ago

There's a good case for expanding slightly on plaintext. It's not just decorative - some usecases like Right-to-Left or lists or linked are helped by a little markup, and HTML is good enough. The problem is going overboard on CSS (maybe none should be allowed) or allowing any javascript at all. I can't recall any email security issue ever which is HTML only without any CSS or javascript.

jimbobthrowawy 3y ago

I know at least two people who send emails where the HTML version is either blank or tells the recipient to stop using a bloated client, and the actual email content is in the plaintext fallback. I think I had to look at the email source in thunderbird to read them.